Book of John

Process of Elimination

Running throughout your house is a system of thick, wide, heavy pipes which ultimately get rid of the water that runs down your sink or bathtub drain, and the water and waste you flush down your toilet. You may never actually see any of these pipes, unless you have a basement where they're exposed, or if you ever have to rip out part of a wall to work on them.

Collectively, plumbing types call these pipes the DWV (drainage-waste-ventilation) system. The V part is important to remember, because it turns out that air is as necessary to these pipes as water. In order to get waste to flow efficiently out, air has to flow efficiently in. Somewhere on your roof is a pipe end which is open to the world, letting air into your DWV system and letting poisonous, smelly, possibly flammable sewer gases out.

The DWV system in a house - i.e. the outgoing plumbing - is a lot trickier to work with than the incoming fresh-water plumbing. For one thing, the pipes are bigger (the sewage pipe, AKA soil pipe, your toilet sits atop has an opening three or four inches in diameter), and for another, they work mostly on gravity, which means that pipes have to be slanted at certain angles, you have to worry about the heights of fixtures relative to one another, and so forth.

I'm telling you all this because you need it to answer two basic questions about a toilet:
1. How does water stay in the bowl between flushes?
2. Why does a toilet use so much water when flushing?

Of all the fixtures in your house that put stuff into the DWV system, the toilet is the one that causes the most problems. For one thing, its wastes are often solid, and hard to move without getting stuck in the system somewhere. For another, its wastes are what cause the bulk of the nasty smells, bacteria, et cetera. That's one reason a toilet uses a lot of water - to help move this stuff. The other reason is to get the water and waste past a built-in obstacle.

As I said, your toilet is sitting right on top of a soil pipe. If you unfastened your toilet from where it's bolted to the floor, you'd see a dark, smelly, three-inch hole in the floor. A lot of people assume that there is some sort of valve, flap, or other mechanical means of closing off this pipe between flushes. They figure a toilet just works on the brute-force method: Open the door at the bottom, and everything in the bowl just falls into the pipe. As you can guess from the big X across the picture, this is incorrect.

Chemical toilets (in airplanes or portable latrines) do work this way, but they're not getting rid of the waste, just storing it in chemicals for a while. They don't have the same flow-control issues and they don't need a water trap (keep reading).

For homes and any other situations where you want some kind of permanent fixture, putting a valve down there in the "dirty water" part of the toilet is a bad idea. Lots of reasons, but here's the most obvious one: It would clog and jam a lot, and you'd have to remove the entire toilet to fix it. (All the valves in your toilet - in fact, all mechanical moving parts - are up in the tank.)

Okay, so if the soil pipe is always open for business, what keeps water in the bowl between flushes? Why doesn't it all flow down the soil pipe? You may not be able to see it from the outside, depending on the design of your toilet, but there is a very sharp bend in the drain path. Water actually has to flow up and over this hump in order to get out.

This keeps water in the bowl between flushes. The hump is high because water seeks its own level, so the height of the hump controls the depth of water that stays in the bowl.

Why is keeping water in the bowl a good thing? Mostly, to prevent nasty gases from coming back into the bathroom. Sewer gases rise, and they'll take the shortest path up and out they can find. Putting a water trap into the fixtures is the simplest and best way to make sure the gases only escape where you intend them to, i.e. not into your bathroom or kitchen. Sinks and tubs have water traps as well - that's what that U-shaped bend in the pipe under your sink is for.

The disadvantage, of course, is that this bend requires a certain amount of force to get water past, and it is a prime location for clogs. Hence the huge amount of water used when you flush. (In many cases it's still more water than you need, but we'll come to that.)

You now know the biggest secret of the toilet: It has a built-in problem waiting to happen.

[All of this discussion involves conventional flush toilets or "gravity-feed" toilets. At the end, when I come to toilet replacement, I'll discuss a few alternate approaches that have come into existence.]

Take off the lid of your toilet tank. Oh, go on, don't be afraid. It'll probably be a little scary-looking, especially if your toilet is old, but always remember this: The water in the toilet tank (unlike the water in the bowl) is clean. I wouldn't drink it, mind you, but it doesn't have feces in it (unless something is really wrong with your municipal water supply). If you put your bare hand in it, it will not kill you.

So why is the inside of the tank coated with brown and black gunk? That all came out of the water. It's minerals and probably a small amount of rust. Since this is tap water, the water in your kitchen sink has it too. But the water in your kitchen sink doesn't sit around and leach into uncoated ceramic, so you don't see it there.

The stuff in this tank probably looks like a complex mess, but it really breaks down into two parts: Letting water out (flush) and letting water back in (refill).

When you pull the handle to flush your toilet (go ahead, try it with the tank open and watch what happens), you're pulling a lever attached to a chain or wire, which is attached to the stopper or tank ball at the very bottom of the tank. You are lifting up that stopper. You lift it, the hole in the bottom of the tank opens, and water flows into the business portion of the toilet. Simple.

But then we have to stop the flow of water after a certain point. Sometimes this is done strictly by gravity - that is, the stopper falls back down, and the time it takes for it to fall down and block the hole again is the duration of the flush. Sometimes the stopper is partially buoyant so it floats a little in the water of the tank and takes longer to fall. Sometimes it's mechanically regulated, by means simple (a cup fills with water as the tank refills and gradually weighs down the stopper) or complex (a motor or slow spring - like a no-slam door - on the stopper).

Sometimes the flush is a siphon - which means it keeps going as long as water is above the level of the siphon intake, and the valve will close by itself when the water falls below that. I've never seen a siphon toilet but I'm assured they exist.

Okay, so how does water come back into the tank again? Behind your toilet is a short thin pipe, usually a flexible one, which provides water to your toilet. (You'll see a picture of it later, when I talk about repairs.) Inside your toilet tank there is a special kind of valve - a ballcock - which only opens when its stopper is lifted away or pulled sideways. This ballcock is attached to a long metal arm, and on the end of that arm is a float. The float is called a float because it floats - atop the water in the tank. When the toilet is flushed, the tank empties, and the float has nothing to float on - so it falls, and yanks the ballcock open as it does.

Water comes in. As the water comes in, the float starts floating again, and eventually it floats high enough that the ballcock closes. No more water. Still simple.

The only other wrinkle is that we not only need to put water back into the tank, but into the toilet bowl. Not very much, but a little. So there's a little plastic tube which goes from the fresh-water inlet to an open-ended pipe, like this.

The open-ended pipe is an overflow pipe. It drains straight to the toilet bowl. If for some reason the tank gets a little too full, it'll go down this pipe into the bowl. So by sticking the little plastic bowl refill tube into it, we have an easy way of putting a little water back into the bowl after the flush.

That's it! There is essentially nothing more to a conventional toilet.

These photos look a little different from my simplified drawings. I show a fat intake pipe on the right and a little narrow refill pipe extending from it on the left. In this toilet, it's the other way around. The narrow pipe on the left is the intake; it extends all the way through the bottom of the tank and connects to the water supply. The fat pipe on the right is just hanging there (it opens into the tank, but is hard to see); that's how water pours into the tank.

Some toilets do things a little differently, but the basic idea is the same. For example, you may see ones where the float rides up and down the fill pipe. These are easier to adjust, but the float tends not to float as well. Many modern toilets get far more sophisticated about controlling the flow both in and out, and may have push-button flushing (which implies a motor somewhere) or high-pressure flow or other wrinkles.

The rationale behind most of these improvements is water conservation, so don't get too annoyed if you have a complicated modern toilet - it is almost certainly less of a water pig than the kind I'm describing, even if it is harder to repair. Everything has a price. (See the toilet replacement discussion for more on this.)

Toilet Troubleshooting

The most common problem with a toilet is a clogged toilet. For these, the old methods are the best - it pays to have a plunger or "plumber's helper" somewhere around the house. They're cheap. They're just suction cups. The only thing to remember about using them is to make sure you have one that makes a good seal (i.e. is larger than the opening at the bottom of your toilet bowl, and is flexible enough to fit well into the curves of the bowl). Get the kind with the full head; the picture illustrates the difference.

Plungers suck. Literally. This means they're none too clean after you unclog the toilet. Bear this in mind.

For severe clogs - i.e. ones a plunger can't solve - you could go get a toilet auger, also known as a closet auger or "plumber's snake," but they're not so cheap as plungers, and for occasional needs you may just want to try straightening out a wire coat hanger and working it slowly into the bend in the toilet pipe. It takes patience to work the curves, but it's cheaper and doesn't require a trip to the hardware store in the dead of night.

Under no circumstances should you use unclogging chemicals! These are bad enough to use for hairballs in your sink drain. They are positively horrid for toilets. These chemicals are all strongly caustic - they work by eating away whatever material is causing the clog. Their fundamental problem is that anything strong enough to eat the clog is probably strong enough to damage the pipes as well. And in the toilet, they usually won't do any good anyway ... and then will sit in your toilet bowl creating dangerous fumes while you try something else. They cause ecological problems when they eventually get into sewers and septic tanks. They are no fun. Avoid them.

If you can't find the clog in your toilet, the clog may not be in your toilet. A clogged soil pipe requires detailed knowledge of your DWV system, and probably a very long auger. I'm not saying you can't unclog it yourself - I have - but it's beyond the scope of this little essay.

The second most common problem I've ever had with a toilet is one that keeps "running" after you flush it. Usually this is because the tank ball at the bottom isn't closing off the flow of water into the toilet completely. The reason jiggling the handle usually works is because it shakes the chain (and therefore the stopper) around and allows it to settle into the opening or valve seat better. But usually this is only a short-term answer.

If the tank ball is getting caught by the chain, or if there's a lot of slack in the chain when the tank is full and the toilet's at rest, shorten the chain. You can generally do this without actually cutting the chain, in one of two ways: Move the hook that attaches the chain to the flush lever, or put the hook in a different hole/groove on the lever. Ideally, when the toilet is at rest, the chain should be just long enough to let the tank ball sit in the valve seat completely. (You'll know if you're pulling on the chain too much - water will start to trickle into the toilet bowl and you'll hear it. Try it. Give a little tug.)

You also want to make sure that the ball drops straight into the valve seat. This is usually more of a problem for toilets that have a wire or rod going to the lever, instead of a chain. If the ball falls at an angle, it may not fall into the valve seat completely.

If the chain or wire is fine, and the stopper seems to be sitting in the valve seat okay, it may just be worn out! If either the tank ball or valve seat is worn and they don't fit together well, water will trickle into the tank. Mineral buildup on either surface can cause the same effect. Mineral buildup can be removed by draining the tank (see next page) and then cleaning the surfaces with soap and water. Replacing the stopper is cheap and - as toilet repairs go - relatively easy. Replacing the valve seat is a pain in the neck.

You say it's still trickling? Hmm. Does it also seem to make whistling noises when it flushes? Your ballcock (or the washers in it) are probably dying. Don't bother trying to fix individual parts - what you want to do is just buy a completely new ballcock assembly and put it in.

Water can also be trickling into the bowl over the top of the overflow pipe, which may mean it's got rust holes in it. Keep reading.

If your toilet doesn't flush enough - that is, it seems like it's not putting enough water into the bowl when flushing - the first question is, how much of the water is leaving the tank? The tank should almost completely empty when you flush.

If a lot of water is staying in the tank, the tank ball needs to be lifted higher when you pull the flush handle, or otherwise adjusted, so that it takes longer to close.

If the water is leaving the tank okay but it still doesn't seem to be enough to flush well, you can raise the usual water level in the tank a tiny bit - but this is not the best answer. (Unfortunately, the best answer is buying a more efficient toilet).

To increase the tank's operating water level, carefully bend the float arm upward, so that the float is a little higher than it was before. This'll cause more water to run into the tank (as you can see by just pulling up on the float a little). Handle the float arm with care, because they do break.

Conversely, you can decrease the amount of water the tank holds slightly, by bending the float arm downward. This is only useful if water is sloshing into the overflow pipe on a regular basis. It is not an effective way of conserving water. If the tank's water level is more than about half an inch below the lip of the overflow pipe, the float may not rise far enough to close the ballcock. So don't overdo it.

A few other miscellaneous problems:

If the toilet makes a lot of noise - whistling, particularly - as water flows in, it may mean it's time to replace the ballcock/intake valve, as noted above.

If the tank sweats - that is, if condensation forms on the outside - my advice is to live with it. The alternatives are insulating the inside of the tank or heating the water in the tank, both of which strike me as excessive.

If the toilet leaks at the floor - that is, around its bottom edge - you probably need a new wax ring, which is the seal between the toilet and the soil pipe. The bad news is, this involves removing the toilet from the floor temporarily - the most major of toilet repairs. The good news is, it's not as hard as you think if you have patience and the right tools, and once you know how to do it, you have nothing else to master.

Going For the Wax Ring

IMPORTANT MATTERS OF LIABILITY. Read this before proceeding. If you pass it without reading, it counts as if you read it.

I am about to tell you how to make actual toilet repairs. In general these repairs are not hazardous and I believe if you follow them, all will go well. But I am not a professional plumber and I refuse to make any guarantees. I am NOT RESPONSIBLE for ANY consequences resulting from your following the advice given in the remainder of this document. That means that if you've got some peculiar toilet that my instructions don't apply to, or if you mess up my instructions somehow, or anything else goes awry, and you end up with chaos and ruination and water all over your floor, it's not my fault. Proceed at own risk. Sorry to have to scare you after all my insistence that this is not a scary business, but I prefer to keep my life lawsuit-free.

Now, then. First, the tools.

To make minor tank repairs, you may not need any special tools at all. Replacing the stopper, for example, or the flush lever usually just takes a good pair of pliers.

If you have to replace the ballcock/intake valve, the big problem is that this will generally be sold as a single assembly with the inlet pipe - in other words, you'll have to replace everything between the float arm and where water comes into the tank. If you do have to do that, you will probably want a basin wrench (a picture is below). See, this is usually fastened with one nut and rubber gasket on the inside of the tank and another nut and gasket on the outside. Putting aside the difficulty of holding the outer one steady while loosening the inner one (a second person is helpful), there's not going to be room inside the tank to turn a crescent wrench and it's hard just to reach the bottom of the tank at all. That's when the basin wrench saves your sanity.

If you have a two-piece toilet - that is, the tank and bowl can be detached from each other - you will see two or three (usually three) tank bolts at the very bottom of the tank. Most often they look like these. See the pale line across the flat top surface of the upper bolt? That's a groove; the other two have it as well. These are designed to be held in place with the largest flat screwdriver you have, while the nut, on the outside of the tank, is tightened or loosened from below.

You may or may not be able to get a crescent wrench around those nuts, depending on the shape of of your toilet. A socket wrench is good, if you can get sockets that are deep enough (there's likely to be a fair amount of protruding bolt). Otherwise it's pliers or the basin wrench.

Oddly, the one tool I've never needed for work on a toilet is the tool most people associate with plumbers - a pipe wrench (what some people call a "monkey wrench"). I have one - this one is a 14" which is pretty small by pipe-wrench standards but you could still kill someone with it.

If you have to loosen the closet bolts which hold the toilet to the floor (picture below), you can probably get an adjustable or fixed-size crescent wrench on them with enough room to swing it, or you may have to try for a socket wrench.

Last and least, there is a specialized situation - if you are changing the valve seat - where you may need a spud wrench, drawn above, which is for very wide, very flat locknuts. Like the pipe wrench, don't buy this one until you're sure you need it.

Before doing any work on the toilet, clean your toilet and its area. Seriously. Scrub your toilet bowl with some Comet or something. Mix a capful of bleach into some hot water and wipe down the outside of the toilet well and then clean the floor around the toilet too. You will thank yourself for this later. I promise. (By the by, you know not to use ammonia-based cleaning products and bleach-based cleaning products in the same area, right? No? Well, don't.)

For almost any toilet repair except minor adjustments, you will need to empty the tank. This is easy. There's a small hand valve behind the toilet, where the inflow pipe comes out of the wall. Close it. That is, shut off the water flow to the toilet. (It's probably fully open right now, so it'll only turn in one direction.)

If you haven't touched this valve in years, it probably won't want to turn. You'll need to take a pair of pliers to the valve handle. Try to be gentle - the valve handle is thin metal and it bends out of shape easily. (They're cheap, though, and you can always unfasten that little screw holding it on and put on a new one.)

Now flush the toilet. Because you've cut off the water, the tank won't refill. There will probably be a bit of water still in the tank; a sponge is good for this (there's usually not enough room to bail). If you're only going to be working with the tank, that's all you need to do about the water.

If you also need to empty the bowl (i.e. if the whole toilet's gonna be pulled up), you'll need to get a plastic cup or some other disposable bailing tool and bail the water out of the bowl. It won't take as long as you think, and aren't you happy you cleaned the toilet first? Again, you'll probably want that sponge to get the last water out.

Most in-tank repairs amount to: Drain the tank, unfasten whatever it is you're replacing (cursing and groaning as you try to loosen stuck bolts). Take the old part to the hardware store so you can make sure the new one will fit properly (although most toilet tank fittings seem to come in standard sizes). Put in the new part. Tighten nuts on tank bolts - not omitting those crucial rubber gaskets on both sides. (Get fresh gaskets if they look tired.) Fill tank. Check for leaks. Re-tighten nuts. Check for leaks again. Have a drink.

So I'm not going to give you specifics for those, beyond what I've already told you.

To replace the valve seat or the main tank gasket, or as a preamble to removing the entire toilet (it's a lot less cumbersome to remove it in two pieces), you'll need to remove the tank. To do this, unfasten the tank bolts and the water line - see pictures below. The tank will be heavier than you think and it is breakable, so lift it carefully and set it down carefully on its side.

A mostly-drained tank. You can clearly see the screwdriver slot in the top of the tank bolt here.

Remember that before you can remove the tank, you not only have to undo the bolts, but unfasten the water line. Unfastening it from the supply end is usually easier ... unless, of course, you're replacing the ballcock and inlet, in which case you'll have to unbolt the tank end of this fitting anyhow. Also, notice the ceramic rim which prevents easy unbolting of the tank bolt.

Here's what the back of the bowl portion looks like once you remove the tank. Of course, those with one-piece toilets are ignoring all of this.

A clear view of the underside of the tank. The main tank gasket here has a little murk on it, but it's in pretty good condition - not cracked, pitted, or hardened.

If you are replacing the valve seat (what the stopper or flapper valve falls into), you'll have to remove the main tank gasket you see in the picture above. Frankly, doing so will probably destroy the gasket, so be sure you have a fresh one that's the proper size. Underneath that is a very, very wide hexagonal fitting - basically a wide, flat nut. This is where you might need a spud wrench.

I have never owned a one-piece toilet, so I don't know what you do if the valve seat wears out in one of those. I imagine it just screws in from inside the tank.

You are now halfway through the toilet odyssey. The only reason you'll need to remove the bowl from the floor is if you are replacing the wax ring, or replacing a toilet outright (read the next page if you are contemplating that).

Replacing the wax ring is the point where a lot of people start to seriously wonder about paying for a plumber. (You may already have passed that threshold several paragraphs ago.) It's not exactly hard, but it is dirty and annoying. If you're brave, here's how to do it.

You'll need a new wax ring. These can be found in the plumbing supplies. There is essentially only one size - even though soil pipes have an interior diameter of three or four inches, as far as I can tell, all wax rings sold at this time fit all toilets. At least they say they do. Some are thicker and have more wax than others - mostly these are designed for toilets where the pipe flange is a little below floor level (recessed) and so the wax has a bigger gap to bridge, as it were. Some, like the one in the picture, have a plastic doodad built in which extends into the soil pipe for extra security. I'm partial to these.

The fabled wax ring. Yes, you will probably have to peel it out of its container as I am doing here. Try not to touch it. It is unbelievably sticky.

You'll also want a little plumber's putty - this is sold in plastic tubs and will be labelled "plumber's putty." Get the smallest tub. Oh, and you'll need some old rags that you are never, never going to use again for anything. And a small, flexible metal or plastic paint scraper.

I'm assuming you've already emptied the toilet of water and detached the tank, if you have a two-piece model. If you have a one-piece, it's going to be a bear to lift and invert the toilet so you can get at the bottom, but the procedure from here on is otherwise the same.

Undo the nuts on the two closet bolts holding the toilet to the floor. If those funny plastic caps have stayed on, the nuts might turn easily. If they were uncapped, they might have rusted solid. Good luck. Try not to break the bolts.

You'll probably want to rock the toilet a little from side to side to break the seal, and then you just pick that puppy up - don't hurt yourself - and invert it somewhere. Into the bathtub is good if you can do it - that way any residual water (and there will be some) will go there and not on your floor. Remember, again, the toilet is breakable. Do not slam it around.

You are now looking at something like this on the floor.

Soil pipe and flange.

The greenish-looking ring is the soil pipe flange. It may have a little corrosion/tarnish (that's the green) but unless it's actually coming apart it is probably fine. Put a rag in the pipe mouth as shown two pictures down; it'll keep sewer gas out of the bathroom.

IMPORTANT: Sewer gas is not just stinky; it is poisonous. It contains hydrogen sulfide, among other things. This stuff is nasty at concentrations beginning around fifty parts per million. The good news is that it's heavier than air and doesn't rise up pipes well. I have never had a problem, but I wouldn't stand over an open soil pipe and inhale deeply, if you get me. If you smell rotten eggs and/or your eyes start to be irritated, go get some fresh air, and ventilate the room. If you smelled rotten eggs for a while and now you don't, get out! It means you have been exposed to it enough that it's deadened your nose.

In my case, the flange is a little bit above the floor tiles; as I mentioned above, sometimes they are recessed (set below the floor level).

The closet bolts are visible in that picture (the bottom of one covered in excess wax) but not easily. Closet bolts have a funny shaped head, flat on two sides.

This is so they can go into the wide part of the slots of the pipe flange and then be slid into the narrow part and turned a quarter turn so the bolts can't be lifted out. Look at the shape of one of the slots in the flange and hopefully you'll see what I mean. Also, your toilet may not work this way, so check the way your bolts look when you take off the toilet, so you can see how to put them back later.

The closet bolts in the picture above are in reasonable shape - the bottom threads are a mess, but the nut will never get that far down anyway. If you need new ones, take the old ones to the store so you can be sure of getting the right length bolt.

Now it's time to clean. Check out the underbelly of the toilet. Don't get your hands all in it if you can avoid it, but don't be afraid. It's mostly wax, not sewage.

Yuck.

All that stuff is going to have to come off, and preferably onto some newspaper, not into your bathtub. Now is the time to get that paint scraper and remove every bit of that wax and muck, trying as hard as you can to get it onto paper or some other disposable place where it can be easily contained. Don't forget to clean off the outer edge of the underside as well - see all that brown stuff on the outer rim? That's dead putty and dirt and debris. It's gotta go.

(Even if you are installing a new toilet and not putting this one back, you'll really want to get rid of this stuff; it will make moving and disposing of this toilet a much more sanitary activity.)

Do not neglect the floor cleaning either. That brown toilet footprint really needs to be scraped up, and the flange could probably use a nice cleaning out - it's got wax and putty and dirt all in the slots, right? - and probably a good scraping with a wire brush, if you have one.

Be thorough and patient. When you manage to get your toilet looking something like this, it's ready for the next step.

The wax ring goes over the horn (the opening) of the toilet bowl. If it doesn't have a plastic fitting, like the one shown below, it'll have a broad side and a tapered side. You want to mount it so that the tapered side is pointing away from the toilet. That is, the taper goes down into the pipe flange.

Now what you want to do is make a sort of long snake of plumber's putty (well, several snakes, it's best to do it in short stretches) and press that around the entire outer rim. In this photo you can see the underside of the toilet ready to go. Note the putty. This will help seal the toilet to the floor and prevent water etc from getting under it in daily bathroom use.

Plumber's putty sometimes needs to be handled a bit to warm it up and get it flexible. It's like modelling clay.

Now, on the floor, you want to put in the closet bolts. Sometimes you have little plastic fasteners that slip over them and hold them in place; or you can pack a little plumber's putty into the slot. This isn't meant to make them absolutely wiggle-proof; you'll need to move them around a little bit to adjust them. It's so they don't fall over or move far out of the way while you're maneuvering a heavy toilet atop them. But make sure that you can't pull them up out of the slot (i.e. you remembered to turn the bolt heads).

Turn the toilet over and gently settle it down over the closet bolts. The bolts should fit through the two holes for them in the toilet, and the taper or fitting on the wax ring should be fitting into the flange. (You may want a second person to make sure everything's lining up right.) Press the toilet down so that it makes firm contact with the floor and squeezes the wax a bit. Wiggle it around a little to see if it rocks in place. It should not have any play, either front-to-back or side-to-side. If it does, you will have to get a thin wooden or plastic shim and slip that under the toilet wherever the gap is.

Attach the tank to the toilet before you fully tighten the closet bolts (in case you need to turn the toilet a little, because of the tank bolts or the water line).

Tighten the nuts on the closet bolts a little at a time, alternating between sides - if you tighten one too fast, you may crack the toilet! For the same reason, don't try to tighten these down too hard. They are to hold the toilet in place, nothing more; it's not a high-pressure thing.

If you didn't have plastic caps over the closet bolts before, by now you've realized why they're a good thing. Use them. Put some plumber's putty under them, if you need to, to help them stay on.

Hook up the water line, but don't turn it on until you have fully tightened the tank bolts (if you have a two-piece) and the closet bolts. The water line fitting is a pressure fitting and needs to be pretty tight. The tank bolts need to be tight too or they will leak. (Did you remember both the inner and outer gasket for each bolt?)

Turn the water on and watch for leaks as the tank fills, from three possible places: the tank bolts, the water line fitting, and the main tank gasket. (Here's the one advantage the one-piece toilet crowd has: they only have to watch the water line.) A flashlight is good, but even better is holding your hand or a piece of cardboard below the drip zones; your eyes are not best for this. Even a slow leak will leave a fair amount of water on your floor after several hours, so be patient and leave your hand or the cardboard under there for a while.

Next, flush the toilet. Wait a bit. Flush it again. What you are looking for now is leaks from under the toilet, around its edges, on the floor. A leak at this point is very unlikely because it means that either your wax ring isn't making proper contact (you may need a thicker ring) or your toilet is cracked (you need a new toilet).

Assuming that nothing leaks, put the lid back on the tank, clean up the bathroom, and go have a stiff drink.

The Final Frontier

Now, the silver lining: If you've replaced a wax ring, you have essentially replaced a toilet. There are only two additional complications involved in actual replacement. One is physical and the other is legal.

The physical complication is that not all toilets are the same width and length. The most important measurement is the rough-in - the distance from the closet bolts (and thereby the soil pipe) to the back wall behind the toilet.

Unless you are planning major home renovation, neither the back wall nor the soil pipe is adjustable, so you see that the rough-in is a fairly important distance. You can buy a toilet whose rough-in is smaller than your rough-in, but you cannot buy one which is larger.

Width is a consideration, too, if your toilet is in a narrow alcove, or stuck between the sink and the bathtub, et cetera. Height is mostly aesthetic concern, but worth thinking about. And it's always a good idea to make sure that the closet bolts are the right distance apart, because once in a while you DO have to replace the whole floor fixture around the soil pipe. In short: Measure well before shopping.

The other complication about replacing a toilet is that sometimes you're not allowed to. Your local building codes may require that a plumber do it. Or, even if you can do it yourself, there may be restrictions about what kind of toilet you can have (see below). And you may even have to have the work inspected after you do it. So check the rules first.

Some toilets are sold as one-pieces, as already noted - that is, the tank doesn't come off the bowl. I think these are unwieldy and I've never seen one I liked, but tastes vary. For two-piecers, sometimes the bowl and the tank are sold (and priced) separately. Shop carefully and know what you are buying. Also beware of buying tanks that do not come with flush assemblies (i.e. all the moving parts) installed! Some do, some don't.

If you replace a toilet, you will often want to replace the water supply line to the toilet as well. Check it to see if it's in good condition. There is a special kind of flexible-weave tubing that's for cold-water inlets, and this is what you should favor over stiff pipe. Be sure to buy one that's long enough and check to make sure it's the right diameter!

The reason some municipalities are so finicky about toilets is that toilets are the biggest water-wasters in the entire house. An old-style toilet uses five to seven gallons of water per flush. That water is gone; it effectively cannot be reused until the far side of the sewage treatment plant.

This is why Congress mandated the use of water-efficient toilets in 1994. Toilets now on the American market are not legally permitted to use more than 1.6 gallons per flush.

In the early days of this regulation, the low-water toilets, quite frankly, did a lousy job of flushing, and they got a bad name. The good news is that they have improved considerably across the board since then, and reports of toilets within the last few years have been positive. The bad news is that they probably still won't flush the way you're used to if you have an old toilet, and the most efficient gravity-feed toilets (the conventional kind we've been discussing) can get very expensive.

(The other bad news is that some of these have specialized designs for the flush valve which may make a lot of the information in these pages obsolete. Do check out your toilet thoroughly - and possibly make a trip to the manufacturer's web site - before following any of my instructions.)

In addition to trying to improve the gravity toilet, some manufacturers have been developing alternatives. Briggs, working with the toilet gurus over at Fluidmaster, has a mechanism that uses a vacuum area inside the tank to help create suction and pull water down the drain. It has received mixed reviews, as far as I can tell. When we considered buying one, my research was uncertain enough that it gave me pause. Consumer Reports liked them immensely in 2002, but others have strongly disagreed. [July 2005 - And CR's recent toilet report has said that they do not like the newer Briggs models nearly as much.]

Pressure-assisted toilets have a pressurized water tank. They are very loud [July 2005 - We stayed in a hotel recently which had them and the flush was so loud I was scared the noise would wake people up late at night] and can't be used if your household water pressure is too low. They also tend to be expensive. Barring all those caveats, reports have been reasonably good.

Of course, there are even more alternative alternatives. Composting toilets and incinerating toilets have both been around forever, but their initial outlay of each is high, and the former demands a lot of space, special construction in some cases, and a knowledgeable maintainer, and the latter is expensive to install and run.

Perhaps the ultimate setup for eco-conscious consumers is a complete water-reuse system for your house, a system that is capable of scrubbing even soil-pipe water until it becomes potable again, and can basically act as a complete closed system, only occasionally needing new water to "top off" that lost to drinking or evaporation.

For those of us who are not designing the next Biodome or a new moon colony: dream on. Meanwhile, back on Earth:

If you have a wasteful old conventional toilet, and you'd like to be a little more water-conscious but don't feel up to replacing it just yet, you could always try a brick. Seal it in a plastic bag, ideally with a plastic tie, so it doesn't leach brick debris into the tank. Put it in the bottom of the tank somewhere where it won't interfere with the moving parts. This will reduce the amount of water used per flush ... by the volume of one brick.

You can try bigger variations on the same displacement scheme, but be warned - old toilets are not designed to flush well with substantially less water! If you have a couple of bricks in your tank (or filled plastic bottles, which is what some people use), and you're finding that the waste doesn't get swept away properly ... well, put it this way; if you're having to flush the toilet twice to get the job done, you are effectively nullifying the water you saved with the bricks.

And that is everything anyone should ever need to know about toilets.

Copyright © October 2004. All rights reserved.